


for love beginning means return

by The Black Sluggard (Hazgarn)



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Deities, Friendship, Love, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, Other, Protectiveness, Temporary Character Death, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24867433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hazgarn/pseuds/The%20Black%20Sluggard
Summary: Jaskier finds unexpected company in the final hours of his life, and his last words do not pass unheeded.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion & Witchers
Comments: 16
Kudos: 185





	for love beginning means return

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [When Buttercups Wither](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24728107) by [In_love_with_writing002](https://archiveofourown.org/users/In_love_with_writing002/pseuds/In_love_with_writing002). 



> Title from e.e cummings.
> 
> Confession: I have never actually watched or read or played anything Witcher related. I've just read _a lot_ of fanfic for it lately.
> 
> (And I totally owe proper comments on In_love_with_writing002's fic. The idea for this just wouldn't leave me alone after I read it. But I get really shy about commenting in fandoms where I skip the source material. I'm gonna, though. I promise. Eventually. I'll dredge up the courage some day.)

There was a woman sat beside his deathbed. Jaskier's guess was that she was a sorceress. She had that exceptional gravity to her—that ageless, powerful aura they all carried—perhaps even more so than Yennefer. He couldn't recall her name, though. He had known a few sorceresses and witches over the years, and his memory wasn't what it once was. He wouldn't ask her, though. Of course he wouldn't. If she had come to see him in his final hours, he wasn't about to repay her with that kind of insult.

He had just woken up from a dream—or half of one. He'd dreamed that it was Geralt sitting in that chair instead. He knew it was a dream, unfortunately. It was winter, after all, and the witcher would be hidden away in Kaer Morhen with his brothers. He managed a weak smile, thinking about it—about that remote, lonely keep and the men who sheltered there. He had lost the strength to make that journey years ago. Though perhaps he might have made the effort one last time if he had known his end was coming. But he had been in rather good health for a man his age. The illness had come on him unexpected, taking him off his feet only a week shy of Midwinter. He didn't know how long it had been since then. The fever had made it hard to track the days. Not long enough, he didn't think, for word to have reached Triss or Yennefer, or anyone else who might have the means to send word that far, or bring someone back...

He missed the witcher acutely, more than he had realized. It would have been nice to have the chance to say goodbye.

And he realized that he may have said it out loud when the woman spoke—though it was just as likely he hadn't, one could never tell with a sorceress.

"Is that the blessing you would ask?" she said. "To see your friend again?"

Her voice was soft and somewhat lower than he had expected. Oddly it reminded him of the shift in atmosphere that came before a storm, long before you ever heard the thunder. Yet the words stirred a sudden recollection—words said long ago, and forgiven long ago, and he couldn't help but smile.

"If life could give me one blessing," he said, "no witcher would ever walk their Path alone again."

What he meant was: Their life was hard, and no one had ever asked them if they wanted to live it.  
And what he meant was: No one should be made to feel so unwanted.  
And what he meant was: I want to be there for them when no one else will.  
And what he really meant was: I want to fill up that hole inside each of them that the world has told them would always be empty and never, _ever_ leave it...

"You ask a lot," the woman said, "but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. For good or ill, you never did do anything that you didn't give your whole heart."

There was a faint twinkle in her grey eyes that might have been amusement. Her hair was...well, he couldn't really decide, and her skin was... But her eyes were _grey_ , he knew that. They were the sharpest he had ever seen. And when she leaned forward to press a cool kiss into his forehead, it was such an effortlessly personal show of affection that he felt that he really _should_ know who she was...

And he did, he realized only a moment later, drawing in a stunned breath. He knew her. He _knows_ her.

(Pebbles in his pocket, a wish for luck before setting his first foot on the road aimed for Oxenfurt, petals plucked with a wistful _loves-me-loves-me-not_ , and a desperate prayer for intrigues to remain undiscovered...)

There were so many things he wanted to say, a million questions clambering to be asked, but the breath he had taken at the realization stalled sharply in his lungs, and they wouldn't let him draw another.

And he thought, _Oh_... with a sudden, earnest surprise.  
And he thought, _This is it_ , and he found himself oddly unconcerned.  
And he thought that, perhaps they weren't as dramatic as he might have liked, but as last words go they weren't bad, really.

Not bad at all. He hoped that someone would remember to write them down...

**. o . O . o .**

On Midwinter night, a sudden chill wind slipped into the main hall of Kaer Morhen, fighting its way in through some overlooked crevice among the aging stones. The candles flickered and the fire dimmed, and the moment might have gone unmarked by the men sitting around the fireside if the medallions around their necks hadn't all decided to thrum at once. Only it was different than the inaudible mellow buzz that normally warned them of danger. This was a clear, musical tone, high and bright, yet soft enough still that only a witcher's sharp ears could have heard it, fading out only moments after it began.

An _A_ note, one of them thought to himself in that moment, remembering a night years upon years back when a friend had shown him a tool for tuning instruments. The bard had struck the metal fork against a table and held it to his medallion and it had sounded _just_ like this...

(And his throat tightened a bit in grief at the memory, though he didn't know why.)

They were all on edge for the rest of the night, and over the next few days they kept an eye out for some unseen threat that never came. It would be nearly two weeks yet before an answer reached the keep on the mountain. Only it was the sort of answer that only left more questions in its wake.

**. o . O . o .**

Blood spills. He can taste it, red and sweet as cherry-wine as it drips down the edge of a silver blade to feed the new-thawed earth. He draws a breath and doesn't think about how long it's been between this first and his last. He exhales into winded lungs, and a hand that had been moments from faltering tightens on a sword-hilt with new strength. Fingers that had begun to shake form flawlessly into their practiced design.

Fire flares, consuming flesh and bone. The ashes fly and flutter away, scattering into the wind in all directions.

He goes with them.

He's a steady hand stitching a wound that by all rights should still shake from adrenaline and exhaustion. He's a campfire at night, burning just a bit brighter and a little warmer than it should. He's a story half-heard across a crowded tavern and a moment of inspiration that has a young student scrambling for a pen. He's the shift in perspective of an old innkeeper who sees for once not a dangerous mutant, but only a weary man looking for his rest. He's a bright flower, sprung up cheery and improbable amid the cold, grey stones of a half-ruined keep. He's long overdue sleep, and a night blessedly free of nightmares.

He is all of these things at once and hundreds more, existing as each in turn for moments too brief to measure, flowing past in a frantic cascade like cards being shuffled in a deck. He is all of these as they pass from one to the next, and for a length of time that seems at once instant and endless, he isn't aware of being anything _else_.

He knows where all of his witchers are at once, all of the time.

He knows that as Eskel is negotiating a contract with a man in Aedirn that Lambert is on the road between Maribor and Vizima, that Geralt is in Rinde restocking supplies, and that Vesemir is at work repairing the forge in Kaer Morhen.

There is a man called Letho who is hunting wyverns outside of Creyden.

He had never met Letho back when he was...well, when he _was_. He knows him now. He knows others as well besides, all of them engaged with living and making their way as they did. There are so many, and at the same time they are so dangerously few.

He used to have favorites, he realizes. Remembers. He loves all of them now, with everything he has—he loves all of them, even the ones who stray, and stumble, and cause pain without remorse. He loves them simply because they are _his_. And it isn't possible to love _more_ than he does in the chorus of moments and places where he resides. It's what he is for—what he _is_.

But he remembers that he _used_ to have favorites. He remembers staying up late on winter nights and listening to Eskel tell him stories because he was the only one in the lot of them who could tell one properly. He remembers getting insensibly drunk on the toxic swill that Lambert brewed in his spare time. He remembers standing in front of Vesemir for the first time, enthralled and excited and _terrified_ of being found wanting.

He remembers seeing Geralt that first time, too, drinking alone in a tavern, a man with white hair and a horse and a broken heart, and a road that stretched on and on and _on_...

And he remembers a young man. An old man. A boy. A man who wasn't any of those things. A poet, a musician, a spy, a student, a teacher, a noble, a knave, a wanderer, a lover, a friend, a fool...

A man who had died. A man who had _lived_.

And he thinks, ' _Oh..._ '

(And it's the first real thought he's had for himself in the last three years, though it had felt at once like forever and like no time at all, and he shrugs away the notion of years as unimportant.)

Because he remembers now that he was once more and less and different than he is. He remembers being small and solid and temporary and sharp and real and alive—that he had existed in one place at a time, in one moment only, his life taking the shape of a road that went on and on and on and he could only go forward and not back...that the road had had a beginning, and it had just as surely had an end, and that he had reached it.

He remembers that he was a man once. That he had had a name.

He remembers that he was Jaskier.

And he thinks perhaps that he still is—or that a part of him is. There is a part of him that is Jaskier, but with all of the uncertainties sanded away so that only the truest parts of him remained. The parts that loved, the parts that soothed. The parts that knew how important the smallest of comforts could be, at the right moment, to the right person. The parts that understood that the world was dark, but that there were beautiful things in it if one only dared hold up a candle so that others might see. The parts that strove, above all else, to evoke in others what he felt himself.

And he thinks that if he had realized that the blessing he had asked for would result in a sort of godhood, that he might have asked instead for a eulogy so grand that it would outlive even the name of whomever wrote it...

(Then again, perhaps he wouldn't have. If he had known what his options were, perhaps he might have chosen this anyway.)

But it was far too late now to reconsider, and to speculate on what he might have otherwise done would be a waste of his time and energy. He had a very important job to do, after all.

Gods knew you couldn't trust witchers to look after themselves.


End file.
